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Comment of the Week

“What seems to work for me every time is garlic vodka. You can find some details on the internet but the basic preparation is following. Take a head of garlic, chop it finely, put it in a jar, pour 0,5 litre voda in the jar, let it be for 3 weeks shaking it twice a day and then filter garlic vodka discarding the garlic. Use just drops of it; they say 20 drops 3 times a day at most.”

About the Author

Mark Sisson is the founder of Mark’s Daily Apple, godfather to the Primal food and lifestyle movement, and the New York Times bestselling author of The Keto Reset Diet. His latest book is Keto for Life, where he discusses how he combines the keto diet with a Primal lifestyle for optimal health and longevity. Mark is the author of numerous other books as well, including The Primal Blueprint, which was credited with turbocharging the growth of the primal/paleo movement back in 2009. After spending three decades researching and educating folks on why food is the key component to achieving and maintaining optimal wellness, Mark launched Primal Kitchen, a real-food company that creates Primal/paleo, keto, and Whole30-friendly kitchen staples.

63 thoughts on “Weekly Link Love — Episode 55”

I have no respect for Socialists and the politics of envy. On first principles, people should be judged as individuals, according to their actions. Their net worth is far less important than how they acquired it…. and the outstanding benefit of Capitalism is that it rewards those who are better at supplying what people want at a price that they are prepared to pay for it.
Yes…. the results are unequal. That is rather the POINT, because equal results mean no incentive. No incentive to work hard, take risks and deny yourself now in te hope of future benefit.

Every stereotypical criticism of “billionaires” listed is not a feature of capitalism, but of corruption. When we accept the use of political power to get what we want without earning it, we are responsible for supporting a system that encourages people we don’t like to use get things we don’t like.

Rewarding people for doing things well is how the world lifted a billion people out of extreme poverty in less than 15 years. Attacking people for having more than you do, starved a hundred million to death in the 20th century.

Proud to be a socialist? I definitely do not want to attack or anything, but as someone who grew up in a country that was communist up until a year before I was born – meaning that my parents spent a fair amount of their lives under a communist regime (and no, they couldn’t move because free travel was forbidden and you would be shot at the border if you tried leaving the country) – you can rest assured that a socialist/communist regime would not let you read a website such as Mark’s. You would not have access to so many wonderful products that Mark sells, there would be no free-range meat or organic produce in the store. I understand Americans have a very different view of what these regimes can actually do, but please do not mistake greediness with capitalism and do not mistake generousness with socialism. Though it might not always seem obvious, it is exactly the other way around. And while the word “capitalism” might be misleading oftentimes, I feel it’s best to focus on freedom and voluntary cooperation – something that is unthinkable under a socialist regime. Just some food for thought 🙂 Zuzana

I think it’s naive to think capitalism fairly and evenly distributes wealth. People with such vast wealth can manipulate political processes to grow even more wealth and can change the very system to their advantage. There comes a point at which the leverage they possess massively outstrips forces that might moderate their greed.

I’m reminded of a time a friend of mine was writing a biography about a billionaire. During the economic disaster of 2008, the billionaire wanted to show off to my friend by calling Warren Buffett directly. Buffett picked up and the two old guys chatted about how they had access to purchase vast groups of bundled foreclosed upon properties that others could not but individually. However, in order to “stabilize” the existing system, the two of them could now buy these properties at pennies on the dollar. Despite being on completely opposite sides of the political spectrum (the billionaire donated copiously to conservatives), the two laughed about how they would make a killing, with Buffett adding it would have to be done in a way that appeared above board.

In my own life, when I was in grad school and pressed for money, I would get dinged for overages on my bank account and have little access to money. Now that I have no debt and get compensated very well, I get offers for all kinds of credit, etc. In other words, there is a systematic ways in which wealth is distributed unevenly.

“Fair”, is what you EARN. As long as people have different levels of skill, talent and commitment, there will always be uneven incomes. As I said, an uneven outcome is the POINT. To think that someone will work harder and take more risk for no more reward than the average, is stupid. It’s no
More reasonable than thinking athletes would train hard without ever being given an opportunity to win.

……and as I said. When you vote for a government that will take things from people you don’t like, to give it to you….. you are voting for a corrupt system. Corruption is present in EVERY economic system, and more obviously in Socialist systems than Capitalist economies, so the naivety is in thinking that Capitalism is the problem.

Do you really think Bezos “earned” his billions of dollars? The workers who are treated like crap and not given decent wages are the people who made his money. Ever wonder why people with full time jobs at Wallmart have to apply for foostamps, even though its owners are swimming in billions and billions of dollars?

The “naïveté” would be in imagining that inequality is unique to Capitalism, when it exists in every social system yet designed by man.

Naïveté or outright dishonesty.

To reiterate, Capitalism rewards those who are better at providing what other people want, for an affordable price – a MORE affordable price than the competition. Socialism, and every other system, reward those who are better at wielding power.

Capitalism is why the average person in a Western society has a high standard of living today, than the wealthiest man on earth 120 years ago.

Less vulnerable to the weather, to disease, to poor food.

It is a long way from perfect, but it has produced better real-world RESULTS in the long term, than any other system yet invented.

It would be immoral to evenly distribute all wealth. Think about this site. We’re all a part of it and the community keeps it going; should we all get equal distribution of any wealth? Absolutely not. That would be immoral. People do not create equal amounts of wealth and value, and so they are not entitled to the same amounts of wealth and value. Mark invested a ton of money and time into this site; he gets to have an unequal share of the wealth and value created as a result.

To hell with this socialist bs where people can lay claim to other people’s risks, hard work, and talents.

On the subject of child labour…. it seems that it I should now technically illegal here for a child visiting the grandparents’ farm, to help grandma collect the eggs.

There is no reason, historically, to think that requiring people to remain unproductive before a certain age benefits them or society. Especially given the nature of much modern schooling, with its “everyone-wins-a-prize” mentality. We need to learn early that results matter and objective standards are real.

As for fibre in the diet…. I went straight Carnivore for three months with improved digestion and no signs of constipation until I started trying to add plant foods back in, (I’m currently experimenting and will keep doing so, but have not experienced any benefits)

My experience is obviously far from conclusive, but the argument that we don’t need very much -particularly from plant sources, appears to be accumulating evidence.

People tend to respond to almost any diet favorably in the short term. And when you completely remove foods for a period the body downregulates the necessary enzymes and processes required to digest the food. Give it some more time and your body will begin producing the enzymes again. Were you head-to-toe carnivore or only eating steaks?

Yeah the tone ruined what otherwise would have been an interesting analysis. There is a 2:30h podcast where Chris Kresser discusses the movie at length with Joe Rogan, I found it very interesting especially since a lot of vegans pointed me towards that movie as proof. I believe there are slides as well.

Mark, in respect of the article about the vegan athletes. I’m so shocked that you would provide a link to this hate filled article.

Making fun of Arnold Schwarzenegger’s Austrian accent by calling it “mentally handicapped sounding”.

The article lists all vegan athletes who are injured and then says that this is evidence that veganism is bad. It does not compare the injury rates with vegan athletes and non-vegan athletes – so it really isn’t helpful.

The hate filled language is what disappointed me. When I saw you weren’t planning to critique Game Changers, I thought, OK, you don’t have to. But linking these kind of “critiques” which fall so far below your own standards of research and criticism and are also hate filled has really shocked me. You used to be so gentle in the way you dealt with people you didn’t agree with. I’m sure that many people converted to primal living purely because you didn’t foist your opinions on them but just carefully laid out the evidence. But linking to this article? What has happened to you?

It’s a blog post, and Marks CALLS it that. It’s not a research piece. I suspect that if you had been lied about and vilified as frequently as livestock farmers have, by the vegan lobby, you too would be angry. I know that I am.
They really are foul.

Before you get all self-righteous about your impartiality, try thinking about this before dismissing the substance because of the style.

Speaking of substance, it is the observation that an apparently high proportion of high-profile vegan athletes are suffering injuries. It’s not research, merely an observation, but an equally valid observation is that elite sport would be in crisis if an equal proportion of non-vegan athletes were seeing their careers suffer to this extent.

No doubt many coaches and sports-nutritionists will be watching this with interest, and drawing their own conclusions.

I’m sorry you’ve had an awful experience and been lied about. I really am. It sounds like you’ve been given a tough time from the vegan lobby.

I just thing it’s an interesting question – whether vegan athletes get more injured than non-vegan ones. The manner in which it was explored is just so anti-academic, that it undermines a good question.

I also get it was a blog post, so not an academic article, but I think we should be honest about this. If Mark includes it in his Weekly Link Love, then there is an implied endorsement of the content.

To be fair, I recall one other time Mark has linked to an article that he “found interesting” but did not endorse nor agree with, so it’s not a given that every link in his link loves are opinions he 100% agrees with.

No, Catherine you are right. Calling people morons in the first couple sentences is not about having a sense of humor. The tone was derisive and it’s unfortunate that some have lived a life where they try to pass that off as humorous civil discourse. It is not. I appreciate the kindness in your replies.

As Mark’s original interest in nutrition was sparked by his observation that “fit” athletes were suffering serious health issues through inappropriate diet, I’m not surprised that he found the SUBSTANCE of the article, INTERESTING.

If you want more research, you are welcome to do or find it, yourself. Carrying on with how it doesn’t suit you, while not contributing anything to the subject at hand, just makes you look like a troll.

Let’s be careful about tossing around “hate” accusations just because we don’t agree with aspects of a blog. Personally, I’m not a fan of profanity, but it doesn’t automatically make the blogger a bad person. I’ve poked fun of Ah-nuld Schwarzeneggar before, and I love the guy. His accent is part of his charm, after all. Besides, it’s well-known that Schwarzeneggar got a kick out of the old “Hans and Franz” sketches on SNL. (I know I’m showing my age — I can remember the day when SNL was actually funny!)

Let’s focus on the substance of the blog post instead.

What the blogger fails to mention is that Schwarzeneggar built his extraordinary physique — and thus has tremendous fame, wealth and influence — on copious amounts of meat and dairy (and steroids). For Schwarzeneggar to cash in now on the plant-based movement by telling us to follow an inferior nutritional regime is the height of hypocrisy. I mean, it’s like the equivalent of someone who drives around Hummers and tanks — or flies around in private jets or lives in large energy-intensive mansions — preaching to the rest of us to take public transportation! Who’d listen to someone like that?!?

Let’s hope not too many people follow celebrities and their fads off the cliff.

Do you check on the welfare of the people making your products? And do they have secure employment, somewhere decent to live, healthcare, choices, and decent education for their children? I like to think you’re one of the good guys, so I hope this is the case.

From the UK, we used to look aghast at the degree of poverty experienced by so many US citizens. Now we too have working people having to use food banks. Shameful.

Moving without thinking – Thinking without moving – What about not moving without thinking?

Moments of calm and ease at home, in nature or elsewhere in which body and mind relaxes so that the mind stills. These moments of spontaneous repose and the regular practice of Dr Meares’ Stillness Meditation are very helpful. The effects of meditation (mental stillness) can also be carried over or be let flow on into moving without thinking. Mental stillness is simpler than mindfulness in which there is thinking on one thing, one emotion or one sensation. Primitive man probably did not use mantras, visualisation (ie to relax) and so on. A relaxed quiet mind, free of distraction is able to efficiently hunt, gather and live.

NB rehearsing a task with the “inner eye” is something that primitive man would have done but, that was not meditation per se.

I am very pro Paleo and Primal diet, but the Vegan Athlete blog was not worthy of being shared, a real hack piece. Almost every high-achieving athlete regardless of diet deals with injuries, give me a break. As far as the “billionaires” issue … our current economic system is inequitable, immoral and borderline insane and could end up being one of the major factors leading to the downfall of our planet and species. There needs to be the right mixture of capitalism AND a fair way of sharing resources. When 400 people in this world have more wealth than the bottom 50% of the global population (3.5 billion people) you cannot reasonably argue that is a rational way to operate. May God have mercy on our souls. OK … any other questions Mark LOL?

Responding to your Sunday piece, Mark — yes! Yes! Yes! As I’ve gotten older, I’ve recognized that I have a very dependable “inner voice” that sends me in the right direction. When I overthink it, I often miss the opportunities it’s sending me toward. When I follow it, I usually get exactly what I want and need. Thanks for the reminder!

I was given incisor teeth for a reason and they arent designed to chew vegetables. I am a staunch Primal Blueprint supporter by virtue of our species past AND the results of how well my body thrived on trying both vegan and PB food intake. Opinions vary. I’m Buddhist too. You wouldnt believe the flak I get as I eat meat. Silly humans. Eat what works. Mark, you rock.

It’s referred to as “movement,” but it’s more than just that – “If you’re not singing or dancing, something’s wrong, you’re not telling the truth, not letting it out.” Our very nature sings and dances as a child, and we apprehend that natural impulse as we evolve mentally, shifting into the illusion that the “mystery” may be comprehended and contained. Raise your awareness to the metaphorical voice and movement of all life-force expressing its song & dance, and sense your mind being lifted.

“As kids, we move a lot without thinking, but as grown-ups we think too much without moving.”

This speaks to me and my changes philosophy of life and what I promote to my clients. I had a personal trainer direct message me yesterday. He’s canvassing to fine tune his new program and wanted to know if I wanted to lose 3% body fat, gain more strength for heavy lifting or gain 5 lbs of muscle. My answer “D) None of the above”. He responded by asking me “you don’t have any goals?” I told him that my goals exists and they’re tailored to attributes that add quality years to my life and less of ego driven results that don’t add mobility, flexibility, functional movement, increase metabolic flexibility, an intersection between physicality and piece of mind, etc. The fitness paradigm promotes the idea that the average person has to train like an athlete that preparing for a new season of football or Mr O for optimal health and this is not the case. Ancestral/primal living demonstrates that this is folly in many cases and I honestly believe deters many from seeking to take their health into their own hands. I do appreciate this Sunday email. It validates the movement that I’m firmly a part of.

Your Sunday email about movement reminded me of the sea squirt life cycle. As larvae, they have a brain and they use it as they swim around and interact with the environment. But once they find the right spot, they stop moving forever and transform into a new body form that no longer has or needs its brain. While that process is developmentally programmed, it reminds me that brains are meant for movement for all of us.

Love this quote, Mark, “As kids, we move a lot without thinking, but as grown-ups we think too much without moving.” After 20 years of working and owning retail businesses, my husband and I decided to get back to basics and begin our family farm. Very quickly, I learned how much I had quit moving when it’s such a natural thing. Even small things like jumping out of the back of a pickup were a renewed experience for me. (After all, how can you manage to do that in heals in the retail business world?) I’ve written about so many of these humorous “natural workouts” so I don’t forget them. Someday, I think they will make a very amusing book. (Chasing pigs, jumping hot-wires, wrestling goats or calves, etc.) As for now, I’ll just jot them down for later, when I can no longer do them and will be forced to sit and think. But for now, I’ll keep “moving”. Thanks for all you do; you are a great inspiration!

On movement …
I once worked at our neighborhood gym where a trainer told me about a conversation he had with his new client. The client asked , “ do you work out everyday?” . The trainer said , “ yes- do you brush your teeth every day?”.
Do SOMETHING every day! It the best advice I’ve stuck to….

maybe this is dark: a truly modern human would look like whatever their parents want them to look like. the days of “natural” phenotypes are numbered. Maybe this is hundreds of years away, but it feels inevitable.

Movement without thinking? A true athlete knows that thinking, just slows you down! Reacting by moving to intercept or avoid, should be accomplished with the eyes telling the (which) body parts to move. Use the brain as switch board to movement, not a contemplator to gum up the works…

I enjoyed the humor in the link about veganism, except for the references to developmentally challenged people.*
The athletes mentioned were not simply injured. They had career ending injuries.
You want to read ugly, vicious posts? Read vegan attacks and death threats by vegans toward any vegan who goes back to eating meat.
Mark has made it very clear that Sunday With Sisson covers things he is thinking about, not the carefully researched and footnoted things in his regular posts
*Oh, I also object to the snide comments about Kap. He is not playing football because of racism. He isn’t the great quarterback we 49er fans hoped he would be. There definitely are teams that could use him, if not as starter, definitely as backup.

Re: Sunday with Sisson
Hi Mark
My thoughts on movement without thinking really comes home when you think about people that have had Strokes. Rerouting the brain to move – that’s what happened to me last year and I had to totally reroute the way I move my right arm and leg and foot. I’m still recovering but thankful for the advancement in the knowledge that the brain can be rerouted for movement. There’s little thought about movement that we take for granted. The way our bodies are balanced as well that’s something I’ve had to work on for recovery.

You’re a better person than me Catherine. I would not want to “chat” with someone that opinionated and lacking in empathy, there would be no point. I cringed when Mark posted the vegan article and then followed up with a question about billionaires. I knew all the hard core right wingers would come out of the woodwork, and sure enough the usual cast of characters did.

multi-year lurker here, finally picked up “The Primal Blueprint” and now my first post:) What a great forum.

my thoughts re: “mind-body motion”, an intriguing topic to myself:

When my greater-generation, auto shop owner Dad would share his secret to life with a taxi driver… he would tell them “I like to keep busy”. At Mark’s age, as a serial tech entrepreneur and weekend warrior/keto athlete, my maxim has become “Keep it in Motion!”. Everything i’m engaged with physically, or intellectually has to constantly be moving. And wow – does it work. Too bad it took me so many years to figure it out!

What sparked this insight was reading the thoughtful, hilarious, and wise Chris Crowley’s classic “Younger Next Year” (no affiliation) about 5 years ago. Mark’s on the same track in many of his posts.

Thinking and Acting: I worry sometimes when you say thing like if you’d known what you were in for, you might not have started MDA or PK. I know this is hard, and that being an entrepreneur is sometimes like wearing a “KIck me” sign, but when it comes to thinking and acting, I hope you’re being guided by the broader principles than ROI calculations. Actually I have faith that you do have such inner guidance and insight. That’s not just fawning admiration, I think some people naturally like to take responsibility in areas that are uncertain and are important. Some people see a gray area and they want to bring a bit of contrast to it to expand what can be seen. I’m grateful to you for taking those steps. Sharing one’s insight is a brave thing.

Billionaires: No I don’t think it’s immoral to be a billionaire. I think it’s immoral to skew health messages with corporate lobbying in food, and in general to skew policy by turning politicians with ideas into beggars who have to feed the self promotion machine.

I think we don’t have a capitalist system at all. We have an oligarchy already. The criticism of “capitalism” is misdirected, but people don’t see it. It seems like a discussion of captialist vs socialist, but that’s a bad way to look at it.

Ask yourself why we don’t have so much innovation. China has built some roads with photovoltaic cells in the road. We wouldn’t even need to do that. We have medians on miles of highways which could sport wind and/or solar generators. Most of the highways have high power lines right next to them already. (I just took a long distance drive). Why have we not done it? Why is innovation stuck?

I propose that we change the valuation of company stocks based on how many patents they have IN USE as a ratio of those they have total. So car companies which are sitting on patents would either be valued less or be forced to sell them so others can innovate if they want. The car bailout of 2008-2010 could’ve been fixed by forcing the companies to sell stale patents which occasionally are related to innovations that would make ordinary cars less profitable – if they were brought to market.

It happens in food too. New varieties of blueberries must be “not too sweet” so that delicate berries like raspberries aren’t hurt by it.

It happens on the internet. Control of the “poles” should permit anyone to put up more fiber, but in 25 states, laws exist to protect large broadband carriers’ monopolies on the provision of internet. And we have things like this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xw87-zP2VNA And municipalities aren’t “allowed” to compete with Verizon/Time Warner/ Comcast, etc… even though anyone who’s worked with Vz knows what a pain it is to get them to fix anything, even for a direct sales call center (which is where I worked in IT).

Some of this stuff is so technical that people’s eyes glaze before anything important is communicated.

We hear bad stuff about Uber being made to pay payroll taxes (a hot button issue for any entrepreneurs) in NJ, missing the point that if you’re trying to help provide jobs, then acting like a protectionist oligarch is only going to get your workers to unionize faster. And Uber is definitely on the innovation side of life. But it’s a latecomer to the internet revolution. Look how long Amazon got away with paying little or no sales taxes before they were cracked down upon. And the battle for the new economy’s soul rages on with report after report of harsh working conditions in Amazon’s warehouses, for its drivers, etc.

We’re creating the new economy right now, and if we fail to treat workers like humans, we’re going to drive everyone into the arms of “democratic socialism” before real “level playing field capitalism” is even given a chance.

If the choice is, oligarchy with social stratification VS democratic socialism, I’ll take the latter. If the choices include the volatile markets of real capitalism, I’ll take my chances with the capitalists, so long as basic economic safety nets are in place. I’m sick of being impressed by solar power stations in the Middle East and wishing it was us leading the way, among other things.

But to do that we have to start incentivizing innovation and punishing established corporations who sit on patents and squelch innovation.

So disappointed in the vegan athlete article. It sounded as if it was written by an angry frat boy, and provided no scientific backing at all. I also find it counter-productive to Mark and his movement to post things that are patronizing to people who made the choice to be vegetarian or vegan—it seems that many of his followers are ex-vegans or vegetarians (sometimes even current ones), and I don’t think you’re a “moron” for having made that choice at some point in time.
I’ve been following MDA literally since the beginning, and don’t recall seeing such derisive, close-minded, and scientifically-lacking content in the past. I hope Mark goes back to his usual type of content!

I feel like the vegan athletes article needs some comment since I’m from an athletic family. I can understand where he’s coming from and it’s his personal blog so while I cringe when I read this, it’s his voice to use as he wants:

“I’ll admit that because I am a mean, vengeful SOB, while I was going through the list reading all the injuries I thought it was pretty damn funny these idiots fell for this line of crap and got hurt, but then I got to the Porter brothers and it wasn’t funny anymore. It was just sad.”

Over time, veganism has gone from a “I can sustain it for brief periods and I wish I knew more about what nutrition is missing so I could do it longer than a couple of months.” to “Everyone should do this and do it forever and if you eat meat, you’re murdering.” From 1990s to about 2010, the transformation of an experimental morals based diet to one that’s pure cultish dogma was completed. In the early 1990s nobody would’ve been offering the diet to athletes, although certain sicknesses tended to attract vegan ideas.

And for good reason. *IF* you have estrogen promoted breast cancer, then veganism can shut down the hormones driving recurrences. Why take tamoxifen when you can be vegan? So you heard a lot of success stories with cancer because it was creating a specific mechanism which actually worked in some cases.

But then it was generalized to “all cancers” then “all illness” and finally “everyone.” Then shaming took place where instead of “wow you’ve been vegan for 6 months, how amazing; how do you feel?” (positive reinforcement, followed by genuine concern) you now had severe negative reinforcement for people who were previously vegan, with no concern for health: “you cruel heartless murderer how could you think of eating meat?” That’s the problem.

I doubt if anyone has an issue with a person on a personal quest to see how well their body can do on a vegan diet. It’s when they start seeking celebs and athletes to support their ideas and when they shame those for whom it didn’t work out. And then they try to convince authorities to support them with thin evidence and a deceptive message. That’s the problem.

Celebrities and athletes tend to be targeted by promoters of wild ideas and marketing in general. So I can understand the feeling that athletes were “scammed” by the vegan movement. In the search for the brownie points of having this or that celeb athlete adopt the vegan label, vegans did a lot of harm to the career of those people. If vegans are upset by the article, they should post a list of 35-39 year old athletes who were vegan from the time their career began, around age 20 and did not end their career early due to injury.

Since an athletic career is inevitably over by age 40 anyway, robbing them of the last 10 years of their career is a significant problem. It’s even worthy of angry words on some person’s blog, and more.

The only thing I found offensive in the blog post was his description of Arnold’s voice as “retarded.” Now that was a cheap shot with no real purpose. And I would’ve liked to see more empathy toward athletes who were fleeced by the idea that veganism is a boon to athletes. After all, he says he fell for it himself. I’d think that would lead to more of the “it’s sad” than “they’re morons.”

However that’s the nature of anger. As anyone who has a child can see every day, anger turns to tears and back again very quickly. All it proves is, this blog author CARES and that’s more than I can say for the vast majority of vegans promoting unhealthy lifestyles even in the face of people saying it doesn’t work for them, and a growing list of injured athletes with careers cut short.

I’m still waiting for the rebuttal article that shows vegan athletes, who switched early in their career (say by age 25), still healthy and still not retired at 45 or even 50. I challenge vegans to find me 10 such athletes.